Product Reviews & Ratings

Wednesday, 4th May, 2016

shoak1 I appreciate the effort you've put into making "frightened" more granular, however I have the same concern as Khisanth the Ancient that this may be too complicated.
Also, would your players find being incapacitated, paralyzed, or stunned by fear that fun to play? Maybe so at your table, which is fine, but IME this would not go over well with players I've gamed with.
And lastly, why is STR involved in resisting fear? I can understand INT (rationalizing it away), WIS (force of will), or even CHA (force of personality) being used in a fear save/check, but STR? Who the what?

Monday, 16th December, 2013

... Brother Goswald. Some ale, please, and a meal of whatever the kitchen is serving. A slab of bread and a slice of meat will do; nothing special."
He slips more coins across the bar than are necessary to pay for a drink and a simple meal. They gleam of gold. It seems the ragged monk hides his wealth well.
"I've been told this is the place to find those willing to take on dangerous employment?"
The barmaid places a mug of ale in front of the man and motions towards the room.
"This is the place. Take your pick."
http://img713.imageshack.us/img713/716/w26c.png http://imageshack.us/a/img571/8880/marlathebarmaidsmall.jpg
. . . . Brother Goswald . . . . . . . . . . Marla . . . . . .
This is the recruitment for Lost Imperium for 3rd level characters. Following players have first priority, if they are interested. Recruitment will soon move to the game thread so we'll be out of the way for Aura when that game is ready to recruit.
perrinmiller
sunshadow21
Khisanth the Ancient
BigB
Commander_Fallout

Tuesday, 8th August, 2017

Apologies for the slow reply amigo was away on holiday for almost 2 weeks there.
I think that's been changed for 5E -- the description in Out of the Abyss says "Yeenoghu's lair in the Abyss is called the Death Dells, its barren hills and ravines serving as one great hunting ground, where he pursues captured mortals in a cruel game" and "there are few structures or signs of civilization on his layer of the Abyss".
They probably changed it because gnolls in 5E are really animalistic/berserk.
I guess it fits the new gnolls, doesn't seem as original though.
Wow...Interesting, I always assumed Zuggtmoy and Juiblex were the weakest demon lords since their main attentions were focused on mindless creatures rather than either gathering souls from the Material worlds or conquest within the Abyss.
Zuggtmoy is/was the one running the (original) Temple of Elemental Evil 'scam' with Iuz.
(In 5E, Baphomet, Fraz-Urb'luu, Juiblex, and Zuggtmoy are CR 23; Graz'zt and Yeenoghu are CR 24; Demogorgon and Orcus are CR...

Thursday, 20th July, 2017

They're mostly described as a weird palace or city, with the exception of Juiblex and Yeenoghu who don't really seem to have actual structures.
Yeenoghu is meant to have a mobile fortress (the size of a city) being pulled by millions of slaves across a wasteland layer.
It isn't terribly clear in some cases - I'm not 100% sure whether Orcus's lair is meant to be just the palace or the whole city of Naratyr (probably the palace, but Fraz-Urb'luu's is explicitly a whole city, so who knows),
The best outline of Orcus domain is just to get one of the Throne of Bloodstone modules on ebay or a pdf of it.
That said, a strike team (of PCs) will probably be able to bypass most of the outer city and at least get to the Palace (where presumably Orcus would have teleport inhibitor magic up and defenses like that making invaders fight their way through a gauntlet of traps and enemies to get to him).
and Juiblex's entry seems to say that his lair is the entire Abyssal layer of the Slime Pits/Shedaklah, but that ...

Sunday, 16th July, 2017

Hey amigo! :)
The lair section has one paragraph of description, 2-3 lair actions they get, and 3 regional special effects for each.
It doesn't list their servants/minions/populations though.
Naturally, that would have required them to put some thought into the synergy between the Lords and the Minions.
The Demon Lords Appendix has 2 pages for each demon lord with description (3-5 paragraphs), illustration, stat-block, lair, and special madness effects. Baphomet, Demogorgon, Fraz-Urb'luu, Graz'zt, Juiblex, Orcus, Yeenoghu, , and Zuggtmy are included.
The madness effects sound cool. I would imagine the 'Lairs' are lesser than they should be. If each Realm is basically a WORLD, then the Lair should be some Metropolis of Demons.
Maybe motivation wasn't the word I wanted. What I was trying for was more like, what would epic mean in 5E? What kinds of powers would you have, what kind of adventures, what kind of opponents etc.
It's not quite equivalent from edition to edition. For example - in 4E balor...

Monday, 10th July, 2017

Hey Khisanth amigo! :)
I just bought Out of the Abyss and noticed something: The demon lords have lair actions listed, and their lairs are described as their Abyssal homes.
Okay, sounds interesting so far...do they actually describe the Abyssal Homes and who populates them?
So Demogorgon/Orcus in the Abyss are "only" CR 26 - those aren't weakened Material Plane versions. (Demogorgon as fought in the adventure is weakened, but those effects are described in the adventure text, not the main statblocks.)
I'm not familiar with the stats for Orcus and Demogorgon in 5E, but it makes sense to have them as End-game villains for standard progression games.
I am thinking therefore that for 5E we need a strong 'motivation' for going beyond 20th level. IE given that taking on Orcus in Thanatos is a plausible campaign-ending fight for a standard-rules 20th level party... what do epic characters do?
I suspect they don't want players becoming Epic level in 5E so they don't have to design Epic rules for that syst...

Saturday, 21st January, 2017

Wait what's Aravoth and why 12? IIRC Muzaloth is 8th Dimension, Kuvachim is 9th, and Akashic Library is 10th...
The name of the Akashic Library is Aravoth. Look at Epic Bestiary page 9 or 10. Muzaloth is just The Pleroma, the Multiverse as a whole, Kuvachim, the diamond wall is the next dimension up, the realm of Infinity, literally you need infinite con/Str to exist there coporeally, and finally you have Aravoth, the Akashic Library, that's it's proper name.

Monday, 16th January, 2017

OK, I'm confused. What does "Stage 78" mean? A High Lord composed of 78 universes should have (200 x 78) Divine Abilities, which is 15,600. 65 universes would grant 13,000 Divine Abilities.
I'm wondering where the number 78 was gleaned from? I always thought I'd suggested God was 72-dimensional.

Saturday, 14th January, 2017

IMO the Lurgese is potentially unbalanced and 'swingy'.
If a fire spell gets through its spell resistance, it'll die very fast.
Fireball @ 7th level - 7d6 doubled, plus 3d6/round from Flammable. That's 17d6 - average 59.5, more likely than not to instantly kill it. If anyone else hits .it with a ranged attack or spell that round, it'll almost certainly die.
But if it survives the first round, or goes first... each attack is 18-20 crit, or 15% chance (if we assume that no target character has a touch AC of 22 or higher, which seems reasonable for 7th level). If my math is right, the chance that at least one of those 6 attacks will crit is 1-(0.85^6) or ~62%. A single one of those x4 crits will be 8d10 damage, average 44.
A 15 Con Fighter at 7th level will have 12+(1d10+2)x6 hp, average 57. A 11 Con Rogue or 13 Con Wizard will average 27 or 26 hp respectively. IE: a crit will probably outright kill (-10 hp) any character other than the party tank. With 6 attacks, this could easily kill two char...

Monday, 12th December, 2016

Hey Khisanth amigo! :)
Well yeah, it's kind of a chicken and egg problem. Unlimited advancement means a need for tons of abilities, but limited page space (and maybe ideas) led to the ELH just dumping a lot of that into bonus feats and epic feats being a lot of "better class feature X". There was some really cool stuff, but the foundation was somewhat shaky.
I dunno I think I had a good mix of extensions and new ideas. To be honest I don't see how I could have done the feats/abilities better (assuming unlimited progression).
...now the Portfolios... I could have done them much better.
Maybe, but I think real benchmarks would have helped the ELH a lot. Maybe not in a 4E tiering way, but some clear sense of "characters can do X at level Y" would have helped out stuff like Epic Spellcasting (awesome ideas, messy implementation) a lot. If they'd sat down and said "A DC X epic spell is roughly equivalent to a 9th level spell plus Y levels of metamagic", we wouldn't have got stuff like epic damage spells b...

Tuesday, 29th November, 2016

Hey Khisanth amigo,
apologies for the slow reply...
Definitely that's a broader, underlying issue... but what I was talking about was the more specific problem of if you're going to allow for potentially unlimited levels in limited page space, it gets spread kind of thin with 'bonus feat every X levels', class features getting relegated to Epic Feats (Improved Spell Capacity and all the Improved [Class Feature] feats, Rage feats, (whatever) Strike feats etc.
Plus you need a heck of a lot of feats/abilities to keep things interesting. ;)
Also, you need some benchmarks set by which to scale everything else. That doesn't necessarily rule out unlimited progression in itself, but 3E ELH didn't really do that (though Ascension/Epic Bestiary did for beings with Divine Templates or equivalents like Akalich).
You could say I had the benefit of hindsight but establishing things within easily identifiable tiers was something the ELH maybe didn't need to do because it didn't go high enough.
I'm thinking going...

Monday, 14th November, 2016

Hey Khisanth amigo! :)
If one were to do Epic/Divine in 5E I think sticking to the somewhat more streamlined 5E ideas is best.
That doesn't mean a lack of options or powers - just that things should be fairly easy to understand and not require tons of math.
Generally you want to simplify as much as possible.
I'm probably not the best to ask about 5E specifically. I mean I have played it but I haven't studied it in-depth beyond determining I wasn't overly interested in buying all the same material for the 5th time.
On the broader design side the big question is whether to use a fairly limited degree of advancement beyond 20th (as in 4E's Epic Tier or Pathfinder's Mythic rules) or allow for unlimited advancement as per 3E. If I were doing it (and I still may... if I ever finish that Dark Sun conversion project that's been sitting ignored for months :blush:) I would start with say 10 levels worth and then see where to go from there, rather than the 3E ELH of repeating levels infinitely...
Well the ma...

Tuesday, 3rd May, 2016

Why avian, I wonder? Are birds more vulnerable to fire than mammals or reptiles?It is probably just because feathers burn pretty easily (they even make a little machine that heats up an adjustable wire so that you can use it to "cut" fletching on arrows by sticking them into the machine arms and giving them a slow spin).

Monday, 2nd May, 2016

In a high-magic world, I don't think you'd have city walls, just as modern cities don't.
True, it might not be a literal wall that surrounds the city.
Nonetheless, there will still be some of nominal perimeter. Which could be a national border or a city-state (or something else) border depending on whether nations or city-states (or something else) are the main political unit.

Saturday, 30th April, 2016

What bothers me about the exhaustion/luck/skill HP thing is that spider/viper bites etc. still inject poison - which implies at least some physical contact. So I think any wound which deals damage has to make some kind of actual contact or injury (however minor), but higher HP characters mitigate it (not avoid it - that's AC).Gygax discusses just this in his DMG (p 81):
The so called damage is the expenditure of favor from deities, luck, skill, and perhaps a scratch, and thus the saving throw. If that mere scratch managed to be venomous, then DEATH. If no such wound was delivered, then NO DAMAGE FROM THE POISON.
In other words, you don't have to narrate a given degree of hp loss the same every time. If other mechanical consequences only make sense if physical injury occurred (say, poisoning) then that is part of your narration. If not, then physical contact need not be part of the narration. The narration is flexible, provided only that it conforms to the constraints imposed by whatever the mechanic...

Friday, 29th April, 2016

Now, a book with a bunch of different pricing tables/rules for different levels of commonality might be cool.
As every grognard knows, moar tables = moar awesome.
Which, of course, makes the original 1e Rogues Gallery the awesomest official D&D product ever, pound-for-pound.

How are people envisioning this spell? A circle that anyone who enters they get transported from?
What a great observation! The spell doesn't say. There's really nothing in the spell description that specifies the size or shape of the portal, other than that it's inside the circle. I'd say it's 100% the DM's discretion how they want to run it in their game. The only size given is the size of the Circle (10' diameter), but there's no RAW link between the size of the circle and the size or shape of the portal.
And of course any answer you give here will have a significant effect on any discussion about how many people can run through the thing in a round.
I was picturing a verticle 10'x10' square like you were but it could just as easily be a small oval, cube, or the full circulate border of the circle (like the outside boundary of a cylinder).
And there's a separate (unanswered) question as to whether you can enter the portal from only one side or both. Or from all sides, in the case of a 3D shape.
T...

Let's say I accepted all your assertions on how many people you can get through a circle in 6 seconds. Wouldn't that just make them more likely to be epic slaughtered in seconds.
Sure, if your contingent of guards stationed at your heavily used teleportation circle don't count as surprised...
If while hustling you can fit 4 people to a 5'square how many can fit when jam packed into nearest unoccupied space? You could probably wipe out all 384 with a single fireball. They wouldn't be appearing outside the ring they'd be crammed in to their own doom. and if we are going with realistic when at a hustle your distance between friends gap suddenly narrows to virtually nothing are they bumping into each orher, tripping and falling. It would be the keystone cop invasion.
I feel like this is just being contrary.
Similarly though if the world is populated with coordinated guys getting themselves through a circle in 6 seconds dropping a dozen gang planks and unloading the same number of men from a boat shoul...

Well, there are several cases of people surviving falls of 10,000+ feet in real life, when parachutes failed or aircraft disintegrated around them; some even in good enough condition to walk away from it.
See, the trick is, that only really works if everyone survives. Because, so long as you have enough HP, it's impossible for you to die.
Heck, with enough HP, not only do I walk away from the fall, I get up, get in another airplane, jump out and walk away a second time. Even in 5e this is possible since it would take enough time for a short rest to get back up in the air, meaning I could spend all my HD and have enough HP to survive two 10000 foot falls in the same day.
I'm not aware of any real world case of this being true.